And the Definition of Home
by The Black Sun's Daughter
Summary: Safe as houses. Ezekiel hated that term. It was stupid, because not a lot of houses were actually safe. But nobody said that a home necessarily had to be a house, did they? (Pre-ship Jassekiel)


Safe as houses.

Ezekiel hated that term. It was stupid, because not a lot of houses were actually safe. Oh, sure, there were plenty of sappy, white-picket-fence-with-a-golden-buggering-retriever homes with the nice car and the June Cleaver mum and the appropriated 2.5 kids, but in reality, most houses were slammed doors and cold glares and barbed words hurled like knives. Homes were broken into, burned down, demolished, wrecked. Safe as houses, his arse.

That was why he never stayed in any one place very long. He was a world-class thief, key word being 'world.' That meant he wasn't about to be setting up a mortgage anytime soon. Nope, he flitted from place to place as it pleased him, sometimes renting, sometimes just inviting himself in for a little 'staycation' in some rich idiot's house that was currently off skiing in Gestaad with his surgically enhanced trophy wife.

Being a Librarian kinda put a dint in that particular habit. The Back Door meant that he could quite literally go halfway across the world in one step, but he still had to live in Portland, somewhere close by, in case the Door ever broke, or if it was being used by someone else. He didn't much like that. Staying in one place too long after years of drifting made him feel...itchy. So he compromised. He got himself several flats throughout the city – all paid for with transferred funds from disgustingly rich people that wouldn't miss the rent – and rotated through them as needed. And even though Baird gave him disapproving looks, he was _not_ about to just 'pick one' like she said. Why spend his money when he could spend someone else's? Not like they weren't already raking it in.

And, inescapably, Stone and Cassandra found out eventually. He got his share of confused looks from the two of them, but eventually those stopped too. All Librarians were entitled to quirks, apparently, like Cassandra considering physics to be a hobby and not a career choice, or like Stone getting childishly excited over some artwork because chunks of 2,000-year-old clay was not _that_ amazing, mate, seriously, or like Flynn's...everything, really.

And one memorable night, he managed to convince both Stone and Cassandra to join him for a celebratory round at the nearest pub. They'd done awesome today – him more than most, obviously – and they deserved it. The latter took a little more convincing than the former, but he did it anyways. Cassandra was utterly smashed after the second round, the featherweight, but Stone apparently had a constitution to match his namesake and didn't even look vaguely buzzed. Maybe it was a cowboy thing, with the moonshine and all.

"Where's your home, Jones?" Cassandra asked, slurring her words and propping her chin on one hand as she looked at him.

"Thought we've been over this, Red. I don't live in any one place," Ezekiel replied, deeply amused. "Rolling stone gathers no moss and all that."

She shook her head with that dogged determination that only came with being drunk. "Didn't ask where you lived, asked where home is. There's a difference."

He raised his eyebrows inquisitively. "That right?"

She nodded exaggeratedly once, then thought the better of it, gripping the edge of the table to keep her balance. "Yup. Flynn lives in an apartment. The Library's his home. See?"

"Ri-ight," he drawled, then slid another glass over to her. "Finish your drink, Red. You're funnier when you're smashed."

"Okie-dokie, then."

As she began muttering about integers and purple frosting between sips, Stone gave him a cool look across the table. "'S a good question, Jones," he said. "Don't think I've ever heard you once mention home."

He was starting to feel itchy again. "Ah, I could tell you, but then I'd have to kill you, mate. Gotta maintain some air of mystery. It's a requirement for a world-class thief like myself," Ezekiel replied.

Stone looked supremely unimpressed, and Ezekiel would never admit it, but being able to pull of that much 'sorry, I don't speak bullshit' in one look was a personal goal of his. "Try again, Jones. You're a Librarian now, not just a thief," he corrected dryly. "Cassie's right, too. Home ain't a house. Trust me, house I grew up in... wouldn't ever call it a home."

 _Safe as houses,_ Ezekiel thought in derision, then snorted and shook his head. "I'm never bringing the pair of you drinking with me again. You lot get _way_ too touchy-feely once you get a round in."

Cowboy actually laughed at him. "You think I'm drunk, Jones? Please. I could still recite _Inferno_ in the original Italian verse backwards if I wanted. Takes more than two beers, and crappy beer at that, to get me drunk," he scoffed, then cast an amused glance at Cassandra, who'd zoned out of the conversation entirely and was now moving her hands in intricate patterns across the air, giggling to herself as she played with whatever hallucinations danced in her inebriated vision. "Now, _Cassie,_ on the other hand..."

She drunkenly brought her eyes around to Stone, swaying a little on her chair. "Hm? Someone say m'name?" she asked. Before either of them could answer her, someone must've fed the jukebox, because she squeaked, "I _love_ this song!" and turned too fast in her seat, off-balancing and falling out of her chair to the floor, laughing the entire time.

It was a sufficient distraction, and they thankfully abandoned the conversation in order to get Cassandra back to her flat before she hurt herself. The bird could _not_ hold her alcohol.

Ezekiel didn't ask them out for a round again after that, but the question lingered in the back of his head, making him feel itchy all over again whenever he tried to poke at it.

* * *

The answer came to him slowly, bits and pieces at a time, without him even realising it until the whole damn thing was nearly complete in the back of his head. He didn't look at it or poke it anymore to avoid that damned itching feeling, so he didn't even notice when it fit all together.

At least, he didn't until the mermaid tried to drown him.

Seriously.

Apparently, mermaids were not _at all_ the merrymaking underwater delights that Disney made them out to be. No, actually, whilst the mermaids could appear beautiful for a while, that was only an illusion meant to tempt men closer, so they could drag them under the surface and drown them. And then eat them once they'd rotted underwater for a while and were sufficiently pickled. Yecch. Mermaids were not pretty, either. They did not have fabulous red hair and wear seashell accessories. No. They looked like the Missing Link and a piranha had a child together. He'd seen more attractive garbage heaps.

These ones had been drowning people in a little coastal town in England because local trawlers had practically starved them of their usual fishy diet, and getting out far enough to deal with them meant being on a boat. Ezekiel Jones did not do boats. He'd been bent over the railing vomiting up everything that he'd ever eaten in his life, including things he'd only imagined eating at some point, when one of those _things_ had lunged clean up out of the water to grab him and yank him overboard.

He didn't know what exactly all happened after that, at least not until much later when Baird told him how Stone had jumped in to save him and Cassandra had actually managed to shoot one of the mermaids with a spear gun when it tried drowning the cowboy, too. No, the next thing he knew, he was lying on the deck, coughing and sputtering as he vomited up briny water. His chest hurt something fierce, and his lungs felt like they'd been scrubbed out with steel wool and sandpaper. They had gotten him into dry clothes, wrapped him in blankets, and refused to let him set foot out of the cabin until they were back on solid land and returning to the Library, where he was practically force-fed a bowl of soup – which was actually pretty damn good, don't tell Stone – and made to stay seated on a couch until the shivering stopped.

Ezekiel didn't know how he managed to fall asleep, but he did, and when he woke up, he was horizontal on the sofa. And his head was in someone's lap. And it wasn't Cassandra, because he didn't think that Cassandra really ever wore jeans. Or those heavy clodhopping monstrosities that Stone liked to call shoes, currently propped up on the coffee table. Yeah, probably wasn't Cassandra. Peeking through his lashes, he cracked one eye open and glanced up as best he could without actually turning his head. Stone had a spiral-bound notebook propped open on the arm of the sofa, busily scratching away in it; his free hand rested on Ezekiel's back between his shoulder blades, warmth seeping into his spine from the contact. A gentle shuffle of movement from the other end of the sofa made him glance downwards, still just squinting through his lashes. Cassandra was sitting on the other end, and he had his calves across her lap, one of her small hands on his knee, the other keeping a hardcover book balanced on the sofa's armrest.

Ezekiel closed his eyes again for a moment, focusing very hard on keeping his breathing slow and even, totally not freaking out. Nope. Not at all. Just…screaming internally. Yep. That was all. No big deal. His not-freaking-out continued for another good ten minutes full of vicious internal debate, but his thoughts – whatever they were, he honestly couldn't tell – ground to a screeching, discordant thought when the hand resting on his back moved, sliding up to his shoulder and squeezing gently before returning to its original position. "When you're up for it, Jones, you need to take a shower. You still smell like fish," Stone muttered quietly, and there was a quiet 'mm-hm' of agreement from the other end of the sofa, slender fingers gently patting his knee.

All his breath rushed out in one long exhale, and he tilted his head to better look at the cowboy, given that it was so obviously pointless to keep pretending he was asleep. Stone hadn't even paused writing in the notebook, like this was totally normal and not at all freaking him right the bloody hell out. Lucky git. He started to sit up, but sudden burning pain ripped through both his arms, down his back, and Stone immediately moved his hand back to his shoulder, forcing him back down. "I said, _when you're up for it._ The mermaid scratched you up pretty good, just take it easy," he muttered gruffly, shaking his head.

Ezekiel stared up at him for a moment, then slowly, stiffly laid back down, now a lot more aware of that uncomfortable pain. There was nowhere else to go without physically sitting up and moving, which was obviously not an option at this point, so he carefully lowered his head back down to rest on Stone's lap. He waited to be told to move, for the withdrawal, because seriously, Mr. Rough-and-Tumble Cowboy was okay with being a human pillow? How about _no?_

Stone made a dissatisfied noise, and Ezekiel tensed, but then he heard paper tearing and a paper ball went flying towards the trashbin, where it bounced off the rim onto the floor. "Damn."

"I could've made _that_ , Jake," Cassandra scoffed.

"The hell you could've."

"Hm. Trajectory, velocity, distance, angle of – "

"Yeah, yeah, whatever, I get it," Stone grumbled under his breath, turning to a new page in the notebook, occasionally muttering to himself as he scratched away at the pages.

Cassandra patted his knee, startling him so much he jumped and immediately flinched. "Jones, _relax._ I can practically hear you thinking too hard from down here. Just go back to sleep," she insisted gently. He felt her move and glanced down as she twisted around to pull the afghan off the back of the sofa and onto him. "Sleep. I'm serious."

Ezekiel exhaled slowly and tried to relax. Which was stupid, because _trying_ to relax was really a paradox, wasn't it? If you were trying to do anything, you obviously weren't relaxing. But then Stone started doing this thing with his hand where he kept digging his fingers into Ezekiel's back, except it didn't hurt, and the pressure on his spine was actually kind of soothing, and Cassandra kept stroking his knee like he was a cat or something, which was almost offensive, he was not a _pet,_ but hell, now he _was_ kind of sleepy.

Sneaky buggers.

* * *

That was only one little piece of the answer, though, and it was one of the first that he was consciously aware of. Safe as houses was a load of rubbish, and it still made him feel itchy to think of ever actually living in a house permanently. Ezekiel didn't live in any one place for too long and probably never would. No picket fence, definitely no golden retriever for him. But home wasn't necessarily a house, was it? It'd never properly occurred to him before, though, that the two weren't exclusive to each other, that a house could just be a place to sleep and bathe, and a home could be a place where he felt peaceful and relaxed and safe.

Home was knitted jumpers, laughter, fuzzy socks, journals with hand-drawn patterns, false innocence, hot chocolate, flowers, warm blankets, and the most ludicrous throw cushions known to mankind. Home was leather-bound books, notebooks with half the pages missing, entire paragraphs scratched out, ink stains, strong coffee, crunched up paper, paint, obscure references, and absolutely horrid taste in music.

Safe as houses, his arse. But who ever said that home couldn't be a person (or two) instead of a place?


End file.
